A Change in Weather
by Unique Sandwich
Summary: Rainbow Bridge, retold in the rainy season.


**A Change in Weather**  
by Kelsey  
  
Disclaimer: I have an L in my name, but I'm not CLAMP. All translated lines from X canon are courtesy of sekaiseifuku.net.  
  
Warnings: None, really. It's a miracle!  
  
Notes: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SHOIRYU! As far as I know, there is no official date for when Rainbow Bridge occurred in canon, so I shifted it to the rainy season, early June to the first week of July. Norah Jones' "Angels" supplied the background music for the writing. Contact me on AIM (KelseyML) if you'd like the mp3, because it's really lovely.   
  


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* * *

  
An unpleasant dampness to the air, Seishirou decided, placing the unlit cigarette back into its packaging. His lighter had sputtered and died in the subtle, misting droplets in the air, and though the moisture was not enough to be constituted as rain, neither was it the perfect clarity of a sunny day. Filmy skeins of fog swirled in the slight breeze, reminiscent of the motion of water... no, this was no downpour, but surely no weather to be going for a stroll in. He had merely desired to go outside, to get some fresh air after a slight break in the ever-present stream of rain. The rainy season was always so terribly boring.  
  
Well. He wouldn't be bored much longer, if his _Kamui's_ prediction proved correct.  
  
A slim figure in white stood at the opposite end of the bridge, and he approached it with noiseless footsteps, though surely Subaru must have noticed his presence by now. Interesting that he hadn't moved, and that he still managed to be startled when Seishirou reached out to clasp one of his hands. Really, to let his guard down like that... foolish. Fortunate that no other Dragon of Earth had come here, though he would not have allowed it if they tried.  
  
"...The ash is going to fall on your hand."  
  
The words were quiet, pained even. A curious emotion lay behind and swam beneath equally curious words: curious, considering that he was the Sumeragi's mortal enemy. Even after all this time, Subaru still had difficulty separating the truth from the lie, the killer from the veterinarian. Or perhaps he had conjoined the two in his mind, melding and shaping illusion and reality into a nebulous, not-quite vision. Light and dark combined, neither one nor the other...  
  
Seishirou smiled.  
  
"And you're worried about that? As kind as ever, aren't you."  
  
Emotions shifted and sifted through and around each other in Subaru's eyes, swirling in a manner not unlike the fog hanging heavily over the harbor. Extraordinary, really, watching the play of light and shadow. Droplets clung delicately to Subaru's hair, small beads trembling as he shook his head in a slight motion. "No. I've changed." Two light steps, and now the younger man faced him, expression grave. "...You changed me." The green-eyed gaze flickered down towards the pavement as his lips pressed together, forming an unhappy line. "Although I suppose it makes no difference to you at all."  
  
Seishirou caught himself before his hold over the other man's hand tightened further, a wordless disclosure he was not prepared to give, not quite yet. Instead he removed the cigarette from between Subaru's fingers with one bloodied hand--Subaru, at least, had gotten his lighter to light--and brought it to his lips, imagining that the taste of the other man lingered there with the cigarette smoke, rolling it on his tongue. He noticed the pained look that accompanied the sight of the blood slicking his fingers with an inward smile.  
  
_I may have changed your outward appearance, Subaru-kun, but your inner self, your essential kindness... you're a fool if you think that you've lost that. Not even all I've done has taken that from you._  
  
Would today's events do it at last? The thought intrigued him.  
  
"...You've just killed someone here, haven't you," he said quietly, and this time Seishirou allowed himself to smile at the confirmation of his assumptions. He prided himself on knowing Subaru that well, knowing that much and yet not enough to make him exactly predictable, allowing an intriguing set of variables to remain. A toy that uttered a different phrase every time he pulled its string, yet there was always a string to pull and a subsequent reaction. Certainty in uncertainty, an entertaining little paradox, perhaps even a philosophical question to wrest with, were he interested. But it was enough to know that the Sumeragi remained a fixed constant in his life, changing yet unchanging, different but still the same in that incandescently pure inner core.  
  
He removed the cigarette from his mouth; the brand was milder than what he was used to, not unpleasant but certainly different. "Well, I am the Sakurazukamori," Seishirou answered at last, gaze flickering to the cigarette, watching the end burn sullenly in the moisture-laden air. Subaru's shoulders slumped, and the moment stretched out to become melancholy minutes, silence broken only by the faint lapping of water at the supports of the bridge, the faintest breath of a breeze swirling the fog languidly.  
  
Then Subaru's shoulders straightened once more, as if he had arrived at some sort of resolution, and Seishirou grinned, preparing for the battle that would end it all, the one battle he would never walk away from. Almost exciting, waiting for it. The disquieting voice of his _Kamui_ stirred in the back of his mind, a cloudy veil blunting that anticipatory tang, but he brushed it aside. Whatever the flimsy justifications the Dark Kamui provided for wounding the Sumeragi, they held no interest to him.  
  
"You are," breathed Subaru, as if his words were the product of some new and startling revelation. Perhaps they were; he had never been particularly adept at dealing with reality in anything more than small increments. The price of a heart that felt everything so keenly, felt so many things for so many unworthy people. How many others had the wisdom to savor such emotion, as they would fine wine? Humanity held a marked preference for tarnishing that which was most lovely.  
  
Moving gently as rain, Subaru reached out. Closed long, slender fingers over his hand, the bloodstained one. Fascinated, Seishirou could only watch at the sudden light kindled in the single visible rich green eye, that inner fire a candle that flickered and guttered in the wind yet never went out, would never be extinguished until that fire ate away the last of its wick. In the chill and damp of the weather, that eye seemed to smolder.  
  
At the shock of lips on skin he glanced upwards, half-expecting to see the lingering remnants of a bolt of lightning. Surely he was imagining this, the darkness of eyelashes concealing green, dark head bowed to press against his hand, a hand coated in that viscous fluid that symbolized the Sakurazukamori far more than any tree. A legacy of blood, congealed and coagulated over the years, a legacy Subaru not only appeared to be accepting but embracing with an intimacy entirely unlike him. The scent of copper, the brilliant vermillion against the white skin of the other man's face...  
  
_No._  
  
It was ugly.  
  
The epiphany crested through him with startling speed, a quickness of motion that left after-impressions on his eyelids, a sudden double vision with which came the ability to see extra dimensions, to peer inside and around things of interlocking complexity and glancing brilliance. Droplets trembled from where they hung, fog-condensed, in Subaru's hair, one shaking free and sliding down the soft curve of one cheek like a tear.  
  
_For me to wear this color--that's fine. But for purely aesthetic purposes, Subaru-kun...  
  
Blood doesn't suit you.  
  
I don't want my last memory of you to be like that._  
  
That realization propounded an unexpected problem: how would he die, then, if not by Subaru's hand? As his mind grappled with the question, his hand, seemingly of its own volition, removed his sunglasses, placing them into his pocket, and then began to unwind the bandages covering Subaru's face. Their stark white only served to draw attention to Subaru's injury, to further acknowledge harm done to him by another... Not the subtle scarring that marked the style of the Sakurazukamori, of Sakurazuka Seishirou, but a dramatic, almost gauche wound...  
  
Much better without the bandages, though Subaru now looked uncomfortable, an unconscious question in his stance. _My eye is gone--am I worth anything to you still?_ He tilted the Sumeragi's chin upwards, dabbing the blood away with the damp cotton. This misty, in-between weather was good for something, at least. He could practically feel the other's heartbeat vibrating through his body, an abrupt increase in tempo.  
  
"Seishirou-san..."  
  
"Hold still."  
  
He wondered what Subaru's curious little gesture meant, what new level their game had reached. What seemed like an adequate conclusion to it before was now defunct, an inelegant and improper way to terminate something so suddenly changed, as if a pawn had reached the end of their shared chessboard to become a queen, opening up paths both old and new to trace and retrace. As any master player would, he now desired to sit back, to study the way this changed the patterns, the various outcomes.  
  
Subaru, it seemed, had other ideas.  
  
He was just full of surprises today.  
  
Seishirou was certain that the Sumeragi had only intended the most chaste of kisses, a momentary contact as brief and light as the play of fog over water; after all, something of the shy sixteen-year-old still lay within his heart. But, always ready to bend him to see whether he would break, he pulled him closer, allowing the bandages to scatter unnoticed on the ground. A response ardent as it was gratifying blossomed back, like some rare and precious tropical bloom flourishing in the humidity, spreading fragile petals upwards and outwards. That was the strange thing about Subaru: capable only of violence in passion, of a ferocity only expressed in tenderness. A tenacity of love...  
  
Contact broke, and he felt himself lesser for it--physically or mentally? "I don't want to fight you anymore," Subaru whispered, and laid his head to rest on Seishirou's shoulder. "I _can't_ fight you anymore."  
  
Drops of rain began to patter around and on them, light now, but the deep gray of the skies promised heavier quantities. The rainy season, the most capricious of seasons, yet the most certain. Always, always rain.  
  
"Then don't," Seishirou found himself saying, and then added, "Shall we go?"  
  
They went.  
  



End file.
